In October 2025, Smartmatic was criminally charged with conspiracy to violate the FCPA’s anti-bribery provisions, money laundering conspiracy, and money laundering in connection with an alleged bribery scheme involving the former Chairman of the Commission on Elections of the Philippines. (See here for the prior post).
The allegations involved the same core conduct alleged in a 2024 FCPA enforcement action (still pending) involving two company executives, among others.
The criminal indictment against Smartmatic was notable in that 2010 was the last time a business organization was criminally indicted for FCPA offenses (as opposed to a criminal information / complaint resolved through a plea agreement or deferred prosecution agreement; non-prosecution agreement; or declination with disgorgement).
Yesterday, Smartmatic moved to dismiss the indictment on the basis of “vindictive and selective prosecution.”
In summary fashion, the motion states:
“To secure the Constitution’s promise of due process, an indictment’s accusations must follow only from fair and impartial decision-making, free from improper political motives or the desire to arbitrarily punish someone the Executive Branch dislikes. But since returning to office, President Trump has openly waged a campaign of retribution against his perceived enemies – chief among them those who undermine his mantra that the 2020 election was rigged – and demanded the Department of Justice take up the sword. SGO Corporation Limited (SGO), the United Kingdom-based parent company of Smartmatic USA Corporation, is among the latest victims of this punitive and unconstitutional use of prosecutorial power. Smartmatic USA is an election technology and services company that the President’s allies and media defenders, including Fox News, have repeatedly and falsely claimed was somehow responsible for him losing the 2020 U.S. presidential election. As a result, in the years since that election, Smartmatic USA has exercised its right to hold those individuals and entities legally accountable for their deluge of defamatory statements and the attendant damage inflicted on hits business, putting it squarely in the crosshairs for retribution.
In August 2024, while President Trump and his allies were out of power, the DOJ brought charges against the individual defendants in this case but chose not to indict SGO or any Smartmatic affiliate. Fourteen months after the DOJ (correctly) chose not to prosecute SGO, and with a trial date set and pre-trial litigation under way, President Trump’s new DOJ took the exceedingly rare action of indicting the company for allegedly violating the FCPA – a step the DOJ had not taken against any company for 15 years. That charging decision directly conflicted with the Department’s new policies and was not supported by a change in the law or the evidence. Instead, the only consequential changes in this case since 2024 were the President, his DOJ, and their well-documented crusade to unconstitutionally target their perceived political enemies, like Smartmatic.
Because such as abuse of prosecutorial discretion offends the Constitution and the rule of law, this Court should dismiss the superseding indictment with prejudice. At a minimum, the Court must permit discovery as to President Trump and his political allies – many of them highly motivated defendants in the defamation cases brought by Smartmatic who face potential damages in the billions – improper involvement in the DOJ’s decision to vindictively and selectively target SGO for prosecution.”
